Hackathons have been sprouting up all over the world. In fact, there was an Open Data Hackathon in Guatemala City just last week! But the loudest buzz coming for the data hack hive can be heard in the US where Code for America has been producing the sweetest honey.

So here at ScraperWiki headquarters we are flattered to be their tool of choice. They’ve been using ScraperWiki as a project or session track for just about every hackathon, datacamp, or labs Friday. On the Stanford Hackathon blog, they write:

“ScraperWiki-ing” is a great activity for beginner coders. It is social and forgiving. Even better, your work goes towards making our governments more efficient, open, and transparent by making information more linkable and extendable.”

The closure of Data.gov has not dampened their spirits and with ScraperWiki, we think they’ll do an even better job of making data work for the government rather than the government working for the data.

Advantage of using ScraperWiki according to Tyler Stalder, fellow at Code for America:

No technology setup or install-fest required to start working

Small project with a clear deliverable product that can be completed in a couple of hours

Directly focused on civic data

It’s easy to pair on scrapers

Python, Ruby, PHP support so it’s easy for us to organize pairs from a diverse pool of devs